Southern California Gas Co.’s Aliso Canyon gas leak, near Porter Ranch, Calif., so far has triggered a special federal task force, new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gas pipeline and storage emissions rules, and a criminal case.
The leak started in October, when pressure from a massive gas reservoir popped a well casing and unleashed 100,000 metric tons of methane into the Los Angeles area’s skies. Engineers spent almost five months trying to seal the leak. A safety shutoff valve had been removed, and several other engineering safety precautions had been neglected.
“There’s not going to be some regulation that comes in overnight and fixes everything because, right now, it’s not even illegal to leak natural gas,” says Richard Kuprewicz, pipeline safety engineer and president of Redmond, Wash.-based Accufacts Inc. “Aliso Canyon … was a huge amount of gas—$36 billion worth of damage.”